I am staying at a friend’s house at the moment. This friend is not only a very inspirational outdoors person who divides her time between sea kayaking, surfing, skiing, snowboarding and her allotment; she is also a book and art collector. Any normal person would not have any time left with all these hobbies, but she is also a hard working medical doctor.

Staying at her house means that I not only have one of the most interesting libraries of London at hand, but also a stack of medical magazines. My curious mind couldn’t resist checking if there wasn’t any research that was of interest for the Fit and Happy Outdoors community. And so I stumbled upon research done by researchers of the University of Melbourne in Australia.

In a study published in June 2012 in the British Medical Journal, Monash University researchers showed that dark chocolate’s blood pressure- and cholesterol-lowering qualities made it a cheap (and tasty) intervention strategy for people with a high risk of cardiovascular disease.

Participants in the test groups had no history of heart disease or diabetes and were not on blood pressure-lowering therapy. They ate 100 gr of premium-quality chocolate with 70% cocoa every day over a ten year period. And even though chocolate has a lot of calories, it seems also to make you feel fuller for longer.

PhD student Ella Zomer, Professor Christopher Reid, Dr Alice Owen and Dr Dianna Magliano from the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, and Professor Danny Liew from The University of Melbourne predicted that daily dark chocolate consumption could prevent 70 non-fatal and 15 fatal cardiovascular events per 10,000 people over a 10-year period.

Ms Zomer said the study was the first to examine the long-term health benefits of flavanoids, which are found in dark chocolate and known to lower blood pressure and cholesterol.

“Our findings indicate dark chocolate therapy has significant health benefits and could provide an alternative to or be used to complement drug therapeutics in people at high risk of cardiovascular disease. We’re not suggesting that the high-risk group use dark chocolate as their only preventative measure, but in combination with sensible choices, such as exercise,” Ms Zomer said.

Also important, they say, is that these protective effects have only been shown for dark chocolate (at least 60-70% cocoa), rather than for milk or white chocolate, probably due to the higher levels of flavonoids found in dark chocolate.

A study published in Archives of Internal Medicine of nearly 1,000 US people that looked at diet, calorie intake and body mass index (BMI) – a measure of obesity, found that those who ate chocolate a few times a week were, on average, slimmer than those who only ate it occasionally.

So, if you feel a craving for something sweet, grab some really good quality dark chocolate and enjoy! Make sure you buy fairtrade chocolate like Devine, it will make you feel even better!